Turning
by Silent Echoes
Summary: Unable to convey emotion in a performance, a girl wishes to empathize with the character she is portraying. Instead, she finds herself in a place she doesn't belong. Thrust into a journey of self-discovery, she must ultimately find her own way home.
1. Rehearsal

Disclaimer: Everything that _Lord of the Rings_ fans might recognize belongs to Tolkien. Everything that _Les Misérables_ fans might recognize belongs to Victor Hugo. The lyrics that _Les Misérables_ fans might recognize from the musical belong to Herbert Kretzmer (since it's in English, it belongs to him, not to Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, who wrote the music and the original French lyrics).

Author's note: It is my hope that my original character is original (meaning non-Mary Sue). If anyone thinks that my character is Mary Sueish, please review and tell me. Also, please know that I DO NOT intend for this story to be a romance. I admit, I like many of the characters, including Legolas, but I think there are already enough romance stories, especially ones about Legolas, to last for many lifetimes. There might be a few scenes that barely have enough to scrape by and pass as minimally romantic, but please know that it is NOT my intent for this story to be a romance. Again, if you think it's being too romantic, please review and inform me of this.

One more thing: Non-_Les Misérables_ fans, please bear with me. There will probably be things you don't understand at first, but they will explained in due time.

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Turning

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Chapter 1—Rehearsal

"_And rain_..._will make the flowers_..._grow_."

"Lovely, lovely," Ms. Froyadone said in a tone that suggested she thought nothing of the sort. "Let's try it again."

I was currently in the music room at my school in a small suburban town that no one has probably ever heard of. My school was putting on its annual musical theater production. This year, it was _Les Misérables_. I had gotten the part of one of the female leads, and was practicing one of my many tedious parts: the duet "A Little Fall of Rain." Ms. Froyadone, the vocal director of the musical, had forcibly abducted me and whoever-it-was-that-this-duet-is-sung-with from our homes and brought us here against our will, where she threatened to flay us within an inch of our "miserable, worthless lives" if we did not do her exact bidding.

Okay, maybe she didn't. And maybe I would prefer singing to doing homework. It's just that I _don't_ prefer to be singing my voice into hoarseness for five hours while my homework is no closer to getting done. And I'm not exaggerating on that five hour part.

It was two weeks before the production. Play practices were longer than ever. And sometime next week, we were going to have two days of dress rehearsals, each one lasting approximately from three o'clock until nine-or-so o'clock. Which means it can end any time from seven until almost midnight.

"Okay, that's enough," Ms. Froyadone said as the pianist struck the last chord on the duet. "You two both know when the next practice is," she said, referring to me and Matt, the guy I was singing the duet with.

Each play practice consisted of, actually, practicing some of the songs in the musical. It's just that so many principle characters are in so many songs. Also, the people making up the chorus (the "nameless people," or the parts in which the actors are just part of a crowd) get multiple roles, making it so that they are also in many songs. As a result, most of the cast has to come for every practice, since we go over many songs in each practice. They usually leave as soon as they finished rehearsing the last song the individual person happens to be in. Since "A Little Fall of Rain" was the last song we were practicing that day, Matt and I were the only people left.

"I hate being abandoned," I muttered to myself under my breath as I was getting my bookbag and getting ready to leave.

"You can hardly can this abandonment, Amara," Matt's voice cut through my sentence. "In many countries of Asia—"

"I know, I know" I cut Matt off. "Just because you get a perfect score on every single test in every class you're in—which all happen to be AP—"

"I don't get perfect scores _all_ the time and you know that," Matt corrected me with a hint of a smile in his voice. "Besides, _you're_ the perfect student in all the AP classes."

"Why, you flatter me," I said mockingly. "But seriously," I said, resuming my normal tone, "who got A-pluses on all his Latin tests? _You_ did."

"So did you, Amara," a new voice joined in. "And I didn't _abandon_ you. I just went into the other room to play my part on the piano in there."

"Hello, Brooke," I said. "Well, you said you were leaving."

"Leaving to go to the other room," Brooke replied. "If I was going home, I would have said so."

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"No, no, no!" Ms. Froyadone's voice cut into the song being practiced. "Amara, don't you understand this? Put more feeling into it!"

"But I did!" I blurted out before I could think.

Ms. Froyadone shook her head. "No. You just sang louder. That's not necessarily what I want. If that's the way you express your feelings, then do it that way. But you're not putting any feeling into this.

"I know this isn't part of your role, but I need more people for this song," Ms. Froyadone continued. "Maybe you'd like to reconsider and not be in this part."

"No," I said and shook my head. "I want to do this. I—I'll try harder."

The play didn't have enough members on the ensemble, so a select few of the principal characters had to double as random members. I was one of those people. My main role was a character named Eponine, but I doubled as a random woman in this song, 'Turning.' The women singing this song in the production were dubbed the 'Turning Women.'

"Let's try it again," Ms. Froyadone said. The girl who started the song sang her line.

"_Did you see them going off to fight? Children of the Barricade who didn't last the night?_"

That was my cue. I opened my mouth:

"_Did you see them lying where they died?_"

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ms. Froyadone with her head in her hands. No doubt I'd failed her again. Well, no matter. I would prove myself. While listening for the cue for my second line, I focused on how the character I was playing would feel while singing this song. The woman I was playing had just lost her brother, perhaps, a male friend, or a lover. He and many others had just been killed fighting for a hopeless cause. Yet they still fought. Why? I myself knew no one like that. Was that why I couldn't show the proper emotion?

"..._fighting for a new world that would rise up like the sun_..."

That was my cue! I silently berated myself for almost missing the cue as I took a deep breath and started singing.

"_Where's that new world, now the fighting's done?_"

I stopped and listened as another voice replaced mine. The character I was playing was mourning, along with several other women, for their deceased loved ones. I waited for the part where everyone started singing together. Here it is...

"_Turning, turning, turning through the years_..."

I thought about what the song was saying: how everything stays the same, all trapped inside a cycle—hence 'turning' through the years.

"..._Nothing changes, nothing ever can_..."

How can it be possible that nothing would change? Everything that exists, every little subtle detail, can't _all_ be the same.

"..._Round and round and back where you began!_"

Ms. Froyadone came back into my field of vision. She seemed to be searching for words to say.

"Go home," she finally sighed. "All of you. Go home and get some rest. Maybe that will make a difference." Everyone nodded and cast subtle glances at me, knowing that I was the source of her unrest. I cringed under the combined weight of their probing eyes.

"Amara," Ms. Froyadone turned and spoke to me. "As you know, as everyone knows, it's only a week until the opening night. Please, think about the character you are portraying and try to understand her feelings. Think about the way she must be grieving and mourning. She must feel torn apart at this point." Ms. Froyadone sighed. "I know you can do this. You've already shown me your potential when you were rehearsing Eponine's parts. And, I admit, Eponine's parts require just as much emotion, but different ones. She's also mourning someone she has lost, but he's lost to her in a different way. If you can connect that to this song, I'm sure you will be amazing."

I could only nod before I turned to get my stuff and leave.

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A/N: So what do you think? Reviews are appreciated. Flames, however, will be used to destroy any evidence of bad grades. I know there's nothing about LotR yet, but please bear with me. There's a reason this story is in the LotR category. I just didn't want to jump right into Middle Earth too hastily.


	2. Dreams

Disclaimer: I own nothing from _Lord of the Rings_, _Les Misérables_, or the musical _Les Misérables_. They belong to Tolkien, Victor Hugo, and Cameron Mackintosh (respectively).

Author's note: Just so everyone knows, I've decided to write the story the way it happened in the movie, because I think it will be much easier and flow better that way. And to all who know what I'm talking about, Amara only knows the musical version of _Les Misérables_, so she has no knowledge of all the precise information that is only found in the novel. To her, the story of _Les Misérables_ exists exactly as it does in the musical.

Also, Thank you to my reviewers! Your encouraging reviews gave me the persistence I needed to keep writing. I hope you keep reading my story!

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Turning

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Chapter 2—Dreams

Monday and Tuesday afternoons and nights were devoted to dress rehearsals. I could tell that I didn't fulfill Ms. Froyadone's vision in my part, but she chose to say nothing about it. I felt so guilty. I had readily accepted the part, and, when given the choice, had not passed it up. Would the part have gone to a better person? Would Ms. Froyadone be more at ease if that had happened? Well, it was too late now. I had to go through with the part. But how would I be able to put the right emotion into it in such a short amount of time? Opening night was on Thursday.

How would I ever portray the part correctly?

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Wednesday passed uneventfully. On Thursday, I spent the whole day worrying about portraying emotion and got the song 'Turning' stuck in my head. In my head, I kept trying different ways of singing my lines to portray the right emotion. It was raining hard, so it wasn't difficult to get into the somber mood required to sing 'Turning.'

As soon as I got home, I went to bed take a nap. A long, wholesome rest was the only thing I wanted. It would be a long night. Everyone would be tired by the end. I wanted to be able to keep myself strong and to do my best. I therefore needed rest for later. I threw myself onto the bed, planning to rest for a few seconds before changing, but I fell asleep the instant I touched the soft blankets. I whispered a small prayer, but before I could finish it, I was claimed by the spirit of sleep, the words still reverberating inside my head.

"Please, let me understand..."

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My mind was a mess. Chaos flowed through my mind, eliminating any hope for rational thinking. My body, however, knew exactly what it was doing. My feet kept up their pace against the hard ground.

I lost track of all time. What seemed like a lifetime later, I finally arrived. I took in the sight before me. Pandemonium filled the entire landscape. A large, sturdy mass separated two opposing peoples, but it seemed as if it could shatter and break at the slightest touch. A chilling rainstorm suppressed the stench that came with battle.

Without pausing, my body, moving independent of my brain, sprang forth and dashed toward the battle. I had no idea what to do. Would I stay back and watch the defending army get massacred? Would I go into the battle and face certain death? I felt myself accelerate toward the battle, spurred by the confusion in my mind.

Time itself seemed to slow down as I drew ever closer. The sound, as well, seemed to have gone, and I was trapped in a dreamlike world.

I finally reached the wall barricading the defending army from the enemy. What would I do now? I found myself unprepared to act, now that I had reached the battle I had been heading toward. So, I kept running. I was racing toward an unreachable ultimatum with a cold, hard, unrelenting barrier on one side of me and a deadly army on the other.

And I kept running, the pounding of my feet against the ground making a dull thudding in an otherwise silent world.

The motion of an object speeding toward me disturbed the crushing, heavy air that threatened to suffocate me. I turned my head and watched, helpless, as a blur of silver sped toward its inevitable destination. The blur pierced my chest and the world exploded in front of my very eyes. I felt my feet stumble and I fell, crushed against the ground by my own momentum.

Time and sound resumed their normal courses as I felt both, each in all its magnitude, assault my senses. My ears suddenly took in the deafening noise of warfare, and my mind felt as if the swiftness of time would sweep me away.

The crimson that flowed was warm, but as it drained, I only felt colder. I opened my eyes and found myself looking straight into the sky, the raindrops starting as tiny shimmers and then rapidly growing larger and finally landing around me. As I felt myself dying, a chilling humming started within me, in the very center of my being. It slowly increased in pitch and intensity until it became a full-fledged scream, going unnoticed to everyone except me.

As a last attempt to pull myself together, I searched my mind for a calming, soothing thought. It was the last thing that graced my mind before I was lost to the unbearable screaming.

_And rain will make the flowers grow_.

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I was awakened by a shrill scream. I realized the scream was being issued from my own mouth.

I stopped abruptly. "no screaming, no screaming," I whispered to myself. "I might lose my voice that way."

I felt a sharp intake of breath as I realized what had made me scream. A pair of eyes was hovering directly over mine. A nose, too, I could see, and a mouth just below that. Without thinking, I opened my mouth again—probably to scream—and a hand was cupped over my mouth.

What came next was a jargon of words hissed at me. It was all lost on me; I had no idea what the person had said.

I sat up abruptly and crept backwards, away from the person. I bumped into something behind me and turned to see a huge slab of stone. I turned back toward the person in front of me. I was trapped!

"Who are you?" I cried, my voice rising in fear. "Where am I? What do you want?"

The person looked at me with an expression of confusion. Feeling uncomfortable under his stare, I shifted my gaze. It was only then that I realized, to my horror, that there were more people.

The first person, the one standing in front of me, was tall and formidable-looking, with dark eyes and dark hair that reached his chin. The man who stood almost directly behind him held an air of nobility, with his flaxen hair falling past the shoulders of his tall, lithe figure. Beyond him, I could see several more people, and my eyes darted back and forth between them. There was old man with long hair and a shaggy beard, clothed in voluminous robes and a pointed hat. There was another person some distance away with low stature and a russet beard. I could also see two more people that looked somewhat alike from the distance I was viewing them at; they both had masses of curls adorning their heads. They, too, seemed quite short. Unlike the other short man, however, these two seemed to have a quality of youth and intrinsic, unintentional cheerfulness. I groaned inwardly as I saw another person emerging from behind a rock and a quick movement almost out of my field of vision that surely indicated yet another person.

The first person got my attention again as he began speaking to me slowly. Though it seemed to be a different language, and I had never heard the language before, I could tell that each phrase directed at me was a question.

Almost instinctively, I furrowed my brow and started thinking hard, trying to decipher the strange syllables, although I already knew it was no use. After several seconds of thought, I just shook my head.

With one final look at me, the man standing in front of me turned and walked away to talk to some of the other people.

Now that I was free from that man's intense gaze, I drew myself up into a standing position and looked at the land around me for the first time. I was in a small area that was strewn with huge, half-buried rock slabs. Far off into the distance, I could see a huge mountain range—serene and beautiful, cold and unyielding. I had never seen this place before.

With a small whimper, I let myself fall back to the ground. My mind was a mess. I had no idea where I was, was at the mercy of several strangers, and couldn't even communicate with them. I wanted nothing but to be back in the comforts of home.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I did the only thing I could think of that would bring comfort.

"It's only a dream," I whispered, although reason was screaming at me that it wasn't true. "It's only a dream." 

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A/N: Reviews are always appreciated, but flames will be used to toast marshmallows.


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